


i don't think that you know (when you're standing this close)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Coulson's oblivious crush on Skye, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Skye's oblivious crush on Coulson, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 04:06:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4420700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Coulson's noticed that Skye stands closer than she used to, her shoulder brushing his during meetings, he doesn't say anything. </p><p>Bare skin contact is more effective. She doesn't (tries not to) think about why.</p><p> </p><p>Skye feels everyone's vibrations and it's exhausting. Touching Coulson helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i don't think that you know (when you're standing this close)

**Author's Note:**

> will I stop cribbing my titles from Chloe Bennet's pop career? Unlikely.

The thing is, Skye can feel people's vibrations.

No, wait, that's not the thing. She _can_ feel them, yes - but the thing is, she can feel them  _all the time_. If she had to explain it, which she doesn't plan on because hello she is not actually a weird science project for Fitzsimmons to study, she'd say it was something like music. Music's great, when you want to be listening to it. When you're tired, or hurt, or need space to work or think or just generally _be alone_ , not so much. Probably she could learn to block it out, or mute it, or tune into something else like she's some kind of broken cable antenna, but their time right now is pretty fucking busy with other things, like "Ward is apparently now running Hydra" and also "my boss only has one arm" and "found my parents and turns out that was  _kind of complicated_ ".

She spends a bunch of time hiding out in the garage. The van backseats have historically been a tried-and-true retreat spot for her, anyway, and being surrounded by a big chunk of metal blocks enough of everyone out without being quite as Generally Terrible as Vault D. And yeah, she's a little lonely, but it's not so terrible. It could be worse.

It's one of the nights that it  _is_ worse, though, and the mission didn't go terribly but she's  _really_ hungry, and she feels weird about avoiding the team during debrief dinner. She mostly sticks close to Fitz, because for all his generally-being-Fitz nervous energy, and even with his anxiety about his recovery, on a seismic level he's pretty chill. They drink beer and Skye eats basically her own bodyweight in pizza and it's all very relaxing, except that everyone is being so  _loud_ at Skye, and she's really beginning to wish she could switch the world off. She collects up the empty boxes, takes them into the kitchen and grabs another beer, because fuck it, right, and then on the way back to the couch she collides, full-body, with Coulson. His non-slinged arm wraps around her automatically, a steadying motion, and the first thing she thinks is, _fuck_ Coulson smells good.

The second thing she thinks is,  _what_ , because Coulson feels like wrapping a soft blanket over her head, or sinking into a deliciously hot bath, or the first bite of a warm cookie with cold milk. She's  _sure_ she's not that buzzed (she's only had one beer), but somehow his proximity muffles all the other seismic noise, swaddles her in blissful quiet. She doesn't know how she never realised this before now.

"Skye? You alright?" he asks in concern, and she blinks up at him, steps backward out of his personal space. Vibrations seep back in, pressing at her consciousness, but with Coulson's hand still resting on her shoulder, it's not as overwhelming as it had been. Skye's not sure what to do with this new information, but it's sure nice to feel a little peace and quiet.

 

***

 

If Coulson's noticed that Skye stands closer than she used to, her shoulder brushing his during meetings, or their knees lightly pressed together while they're flying out to a mission in their nice new Quinjet, he doesn't say anything. Skye supposes she should, if only to, she doesn't know, clear the air about her intentions. Unlikely, however, that she could say "hey Coulson, you wanna just hold my hand everywhere we go from now on? It helps with these zany ol' superpowers ya gal now has," and Coulson doesn't usually join them on field ops anyway, just directs from the plane as some kind of one-man remote tactical unit.

On the flight home from mission, though, the seat next to him is always free, and if Skye sometimes lets herself brush fingers with him when he passes her a folder or a candy bar or an energy drink whipped up by Simmons specially to revitalise a dead-in-the-water bona fide superhero, well, that's her own business. Bare skin contact is more effective. She doesn't (tries not to) think about why.

Today's mission, though, was difficult and she doesn't feel great about how it finished up, even though she knows logically enough that it's not her fault. Skye's simultaneously bone-deep exhausted and wired on leftover cold adrenaline. From the way she can feel the rest of the team, even from her bunk, they're all on edge too, and it's making sleep impossible. She finally gives up, pulls on her biggest, softest sweater and pads into the kitchen to make a cup of cocoa.

Coulson finds her there, twenty minutes later, sitting on the couch and holding an empty mug in her hands. He doesn't say anything, just sits down next to her, rests his new and shiny artificial hand a little stiffly on one knee. He's dressed down too, in sweats and a loose t-shirt, and Skye is surprised until she remembers that it's the middle of the night and even Director Coulson probably doesn't go to sleep in a suit.

She puts down the mug, tucks her feet up on the couch and shifts enough to rest against his shoulder. Some of the tension she's holding drains out of her just at that touch, and he takes it as the point to break the silence.

"You did good work today. I told you once you'd be the best at the Welcome Wagon, and here you are. Just about ready to take my job," he teases, and she huffs a laugh.

"Not just yet, Director. You can keep that comfy seat." She sighs, slides down the couch until she's lying with her head in his lap. This is probably so far past appropriate protocol, but she's so  _tired_. Her work that day had been all fine control, no flying boulders, and it's left her feeling like her brain's full of oatmeal. She thinks she's due a little comfort where she can take it.

Coulson hesitates for a moment, then starts carding the fingers of his good hand through her hair. It feels unutterably good; the world stills around them as he strokes her hair gently down over her neck and shoulder. She sighs again, takes a deep breath and stretches a little more into lying-down, waits for the right moment to speak.

"I should have been able to convince her more easily, AC. It's not the Welcome Wagon if gifted - if  _Inhumans_ still see us as someone to run away from. How can we do any good if we can't even keep them safe?" Coulson's hand stills for a second, softly cupping the back of her head, and then he resumes his slow and deliberate movements.

"We can just do our best, Skye. Every day. That's all we can do." He sounds resolute, none of the anxiety or uncertainty she'd heard in his voice when Real Shield challenged him, and although she knows she can't just trust him unconditionally, she thinks tonight might be one of those nights that she's going to let herself.

He keeps stroking her hair for what feels like hours, until everything's so quiet that it's like she'd never got her powers at all. The last she remembers is Coulson scooping her up despite sleepy protests, tucking her into her bunk, and in the morning when she wakes up, it's from the best sleep she's had in months and months.

 

***

 

Skye doesn't really figure out  _why_ Coulson is so blissfully quiet for what seems, in hindsight, like way too long. She's sure he must actually _have_ vibrations, because he is actually a physical thing that exists in the universe, but she just can't work out why they're apparently the one thing that's invisible to her. And then one day he passes her a box of donuts in the briefing room, using his prosthetic hand because he's clearly trying to get more comfortable with it, and as she focuses on it and the donuts (already mentally picking out the cruller) she picks up the hand's resonance, at least.

"It's not really meshing with you, is it?" she asks through a mouthful of donut, and Coulson stares.

"What? I... Fitz says it's perfectly calibrated." He flexes the fingers, eyes it with a little suspicion. "You think it's not working right?" There's a weird note in his voice, and Skye realises she's hit on a bit of a sore point.

"No, Coulson, that- no, that's not it," she says hastily. "It's just, I, uh..." She sets her shoulders, knowing she'd have to share exactly what her seismic powers do eventually. At least Coulson's the only one around. "I can read, uh, people's vibrations. It doesn't seem like it's on the same wavelength as you. On a different frequency or something?"

Coulson looks intrigued. "You think it needs tuning in? Wait, what  _exactly_ do you mean by reading vibrations?"

Skye blushes, for what feels like no reason. "Well, it's like... it's like people are tv channels, or something. I can read what they're transmitting, to a certain extent. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Depends how loud they are. My  _point is_ , right, I could probably work with Fitz to recalibrate this a bit to get it more attuned to you, yeah." She wonders how true that is, when she can't actually get a read on Coulson himself, but it's worth a shot, right?

 

It takes a while in the lab. She has to explain again to Fitz, and he has to find (invent) some way of actually fiddling with the damn thing to tune it through whatever seismic radio stations it's letting off. Coulson excuses himself, after a while, tucking his arm back into his sling, and Skye knows he has so much directory work to catch up on that even once she and Fitz work out a potential solution, she figures she'll try it a bit by herself first. Tune it to Fitz, or something, just to make sure the principle works.

It's not until the prosthesis suddenly goes quiet and still in her hands that she realises. Even then, at first she glances up at Fitz, confused. "Is it... did you break it?" 

"Noooo, it's still doing its thing," he says, slides a dial and it vibrates back into life. "Is that better?"

"Go back one?" she asks, and the hand goes silent again. She focuses all her attention on it, attunes so intently to it that she's surprised she's not shattering all the glass in the lab or something. Then she picks up something faint and deep and familiar, and something clicks in her brain.

It's reading as quiet because it's vibrating with her - a wavelength she's  _had_ to learn to ignore, because "I can feel my atoms vibrating" kind of goes past the usual four-coffees twitchiness and into something else entirely.

She takes the prosthesis straight up to Coulson to see if she's right, and when he fits it over his wrist, she can tell immediately that it feels better to him, but she goes through the exercise of 'checking' it all just to be really sure. He lets her grab his forearm, his skin hot against her palm, and trace out the tendons of each mechanical finger from wrist to palm to fingertip. It's a surprisingly intimate gesture, his fingers curling up at her touch, and she stays holding his wrist for too long. She doesn't look up at his face, not sure what she might see, or what he might see in her. Now that she knows what she's looking for, she can feel it - that same familiar trembling that surrounded her when she'd first come out of that underground alien city. She hadn't known what it meant, then.

Phil Coulson is on her wavelength in the most literal way ever. She doesn't know what that means, now (but when he touches her it still feels like home).

 

***

 

She'd avoid Coulson, if she could, because she feels awkward about the realisation in a way that she doesn't really understand, but staying away isn't that great an option now that she's realised she has the possibility of tuning out. Coulson's as gently attentive as ever, still offering candy and grins of support and occasional moments of ridiculously dorky banter, and she thinks maybe this will work just the way it is. Even their missions seem to be working out more often than not, although that might be thanks to Skye pasting Grant Ward to the side of a mountain. She's not losing sleep over it, because he's a kidnapping Nazi sumbitch who they've all dedicated way too much energy to already. She thinks she might have grown as a person.

And then Coulson is absent and unavailable for over a month, an unavoidable thing that is Being The Director Of A Secret Government(ish) Organisation, and Skye begins to go out of her skin without the relief of quiet. She goes back to hiding in vans, even moves a sleeping bag and pillow down to Vault D for when it gets really bad (and she knows Andrew and May are worried about that, but she's not really up for sharing right now).

The fifth week in, they're sent on mission to Shanghai, and obviously Skye and May are the agents who go in because (also obviously) Skye and May are the agents who speak Mandarin. Shanghai is pretty much the worst. Skye feels buffeted in a way she didn't expect, overwhelmed by the vibrations coming at her from all angles, and she wishes she could just Hulk out, smash some rocks, or maybe get a really neat Iron Man suit that'd absorb a bit of what she's feeling. Then they lose their target, a young gifted who might have been an empath or might have been faking it but who  _was_ apparently already both in talks to join Hydra and on the Hydra hit list, and yeah, Skye's had better days.

She knows when she gets back to base that she's just going to feel pretty fucking crappy for a while. May gives her a look, sideways and appraising, and Skye wishes like hell that they were still closer, because maybe drinking Coulson's scotch with May would make her feel a bit better (and yeah, they both know where he hides his bottle). But although May's forgiven her for the fight at Afterlife, she hasn't forgotten, and Skye doesn't know how to make that right. It's another thing she's going to have to work out, eventually.

She goes to the gym, works at the punching bag until she's all sweat and aching muscles, and then turns to vibrating equipment apart, because she just wants to be  _tired_ so she can sleep and not have to think anymore. It's not working. Nothing is working.

Then Coulson shows up, from out of _fucking nowhere_ , and Skye knows it's him before she sees him because apparently she can feel his quietness from across the  _room_ , now. 

He doesn't say anything, just crosses the room to stand behind her while she quakes another rifle to pieces in hard, directed fury. "Didn't expect you to be back just yet," she manages, and Coulson huffs out a breath that ruffles her hair and feels cool across the back of her neck.

"Mission ended badly and my best agent's looking like she's coming apart? I got on the plane as soon as I could."

"I'm not  _coming apart_ ," Skye starts indignantly, and then Coulson's hands are on her shoulders, massaging out the tension she knows is built up there. It feels fucking  _incredible_. The silence, the just-on-this-wavelength-ness of Coulson, feels even better. She sighs, slumps into it, lets him press his thumbs into the knots of muscle at the base of her neck. His fingers slide over the sheen of sweat on her collarbones, and that should be terrible but it makes something tighten inside her. He leans into her, and she feels him press his face against her hair, as if he had missed her just as much as she has missed him.

The realisation makes her turn around, even though her shoulder muscles protest at the loss of his ministrations, and he takes a step backwards as if not to get up quite so much in her space. She steps forward, moves straight back into him, and then his hands are on her bare arms, holding her in place. The air between them is charged. She can't feel him vibrating ( _can_ feel him vibrating, a thrum that's echoed all the way down to her bones) but she can hear his breathing, fast and uneven and raw. 

She realises she's breathing hard too, as if she'd run a mile or exploded a boulder or caused a minor earthquake. Hell, maybe she has. Her heart's beating fast enough for it. She looks up at his face, and when she meets his eyes, she feels like some kind of electricity is starting in her chest. 

"So I'm basically kind of super in love with you," she tells him, reckless and breathless and quiet, because she's watched someone get shot in the chest today and this isn't the time for avoidance. "And, like, I don't think I can actually live without you around, anymore." Coulson makes a noise in his throat, desperate, and then he's kissing her, and fuck yes, no probably about it, this is absolutely so far past appropriate protocol for the Director, but it's also the best thing that's ever happened to her, so.

Skye moans into his mouth, and Coulson  _picks her up_ to kiss her harder. She wraps her legs around his waist, lets him slam her up against the wall, tugs his jacket off and pulls his shirt untucked so she can slide her hands up and against his skin. This is urgent and hard and needy; he bites at her throat, her collarbone, her shoulder, and she makes a noise that makes her remember they're  _in the gym_ and not someplace actually appropriate for fucking.

"Coulson," she manages, and he pulls away enough to look at her. There's so much desire and promise in his eyes it'd take her breath away, if she wasn't already breathless. "Your bunk." _  
_

"My bunk," he agrees, and by some small miracle they make it to his quarters without running into anyone.

 

They slam up against the door as soon as it's closed, Skye doing her best to get his shirt unbuttoned at the same time as he's peeling her out of her singlet and leggings and sports bra. He trails his fingers, flesh and mechanical, up her ribs, and that should feel weird but it's just  _Coulson_ so it makes her shiver with need. He presses against her, and she can feel his cock hard through his suit pants. They're both definitely vibrating now, a shared trembling that's beginning to make all his collections rattle as if an earthquake was shaking the room, and Skye hopes like hell they're not going to smash the base's windows when they fuck.

She undoes his belt, tugs his pants down so she can grab his cock, and then he's sliding a hand between her legs and rubbing a finger hard over her clit. "Jesus  _Christ_ , Coulson, you've got to... fuuuuuck." She throws her head back, knocking it against the wall, and he laughs quietly as he sets his teeth on her skin.

"I think that's the idea, yeah," he murmurs, and she can't help it, she's going to come right here against the door if he doesn't fuck her soon. She says this all, in a rush, gasping it out into his ear, and as a reward he picks her up again, pushes up against her. The rub of his cock against her is  _incredible_.

"Are you... is this..." he says, and she moans, nods, grinds down onto him impatiently. He pushes in, and the sensation is almost enough to make her come on the spot. She tightens her thighs around his hips, pulls him in tighter, and he gets the picture, thrusts hard and fast into her.

"Skye, fuck, say it again," he groans, and she knows immediately what he wants. 

"Coulson, Jesus, I'm so in love with you, you have no idea," she says, punctuating her words with bites, because fair's fair. He gasps, moans, digs his fingers into her ass where he's holding her up. She's going to have bruises tomorrow. It's fucking  _brilliant._ She grinds down on him again, feeling vibrations centre in her core as her clit rubs against where their bodies are joined. She can feel the orgasm building, can hear things getting louder in their shaking.

"If you take apart my fucking Captain America shit," he mutters into the curve of her neck, and she can't help laughing.

"Make me fucking come, then," she counters, and without missing a beat he shifts her weight, holding her up by one arm and her body pressed against the door. He pushes his thumb against her clit, and apparently it's enough to absolutely take her apart, because she's coming so hard her ears are ringing and there are stars in her vision. She might scream. It's lucky his quarters are soundproofed.

Actually, she's not sure they're soundproofed, but she really doesn't care.

Her orgasm makes Coulson moan again, make that desperate noise in his throat, and while she's still shuddering through the aftershocks, he thrusts into her again, comes hard with his teeth set on her shoulder. The next day she'll find a perfect bruise-circle of teeth marks, but right now it's enough to make her gasp, clench, come again in a sudden hard burst. They're both panting for breath, and Skye can feel the taut muscles of her thighs trembling with effort. It's fucking  _perfect_.

 

***

 

The next morning, she's not even sure how they reached the bed, but she's had what feels like the best night's sleep _ever_ , so they must have made it there somehow. They're tucked up cosily together, him spooned up behind her with one arm draped over her ribs. He's snoring gently into the nape of her neck, but when she shifts, he presses a kiss to her spine, sleepily murmurs into her hair.

"I love you too, you know."

"I know," she says, and she does, she has, she's known it for what feels like forever (it feels like home).

 


End file.
